Ellen,Lora, and Mai are avid collectors of ice hockey trading cards. Together Lora and Ellen have 371 cards. If lora and Mai combined their cards, they would total 481. The sum of Ellen's and Mai's cards is 404. Each girl wants to store her cards in an album with protectice pages that each have 9 pockets. The pages come in packets of 10 at .20 cents per page, or packets of 100 at .15 cents per page. The girls decided to pool their money to buy them. Which will cost the girls less money- buying their pages in packets of 10, or packets of 100?

Adding the given numbers results in a total that is twice the total number of cards the girls have. That total is 1256, so the total of the girls card collections is 628 cards.

Mai has 628 -371 = 257 cards, so will need ceiling(257/9) = 29 pages

Ellen has 628 -481 = 147 cards, so will need ceiling(147/9) = 17 pages

Lora has 628 -404 = 224 cards, so will need ceiling(224/9) = 25 pages

Together, the girls need 29 +17 +25 = 71 pages.

If they were to buy packets of 10, they would need 8 packets, or 80 pages at 0.20 per page, for a cost of $16.00.

If they were to buy packets of 100, they would need 1 packet, or 100 pages at 0.15 per page, for a cost of $15.00.

Buying their pages in packets of 100 will cost the girls less.